No Arabic abstract
We study the Standard Model (SM) in Weyl conformal geometry. This embedding is truly minimal, {it with no new fields} beyond the SM spectrum and Weyl geometry. The action inherits a gauged scale symmetry $D(1)$ (known as Weyl gauge symmetry) from the underlying geometry. The associated Weyl quadratic gravity undergoes spontaneous breaking of $D(1)$ by a geometric Stueckelberg mechanism in which the Weyl gauge field ($omega_mu$) acquires mass by absorbing the spin-zero mode of the $tilde R^2$ term in the action. This mode also generates the Planck scale. The Einstein-Hilbert action emerges in the broken phase. In the presence of the SM, this mechanism receives corrections (from the Higgs) and it can induce electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking. The Higgs field has direct couplings to the Weyl gauge field while the SM fermions only acquire such couplings following the kinetic mixing of the gauge fields of $D(1)times U(1)_Y$. One consequence is that part of the mass of $Z$ boson is not due to the usual Higgs mechanism, but to its mixing with massive $omega_mu$. Precision measurements of $Z$ mass set lower bounds on the mass of $omega_mu$ which can be light (few TeV), depending on the mixing angle and Weyl gauge coupling. The Higgs mass and the EW scale are proportional to the vev of the Stueckelberg field. In the early Universe the Higgs field can have a geometric origin, by Weyl vector fusion, and the Higgs potential can drive inflation. The dependence of the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ on the spectral index $n_s$ is similar to that in Starobinsky inflation but mildly shifted to lower $r$ by the Higgs non-minimal coupling to Weyl geometry.
Systematic understanding for classes of inflationary models is investigated from the viewpoint of the local conformal symmetry and the slightly broken global symmetry in the framework of the metric-affine geometry. In the metric-affine geometry, which is a generalisation of the Riemannian one adopted in the ordinary General Relativity, the affine connection is an independent variable of the metric rather than given e.g. by the Levi-Civita connection as its function. Thanks to this independency, the metric-affine geometry can preserve the local conformal symmetry in each term of the Lagrangian contrary to the Riemannian geometry, and then the local conformal invariance can be compatible with much more kinds of global symmetries. As simple examples, we consider the two-scalar models with the broken $mathrm{SO}(1,1)$ or $mathrm{O}(2)$, leading to the well-known $alpha$-attractor or natural inflation, respectively. The inflaton can be understood as their pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson.
We motivate a minimal realization of slow-roll $k$-inflation by incorporating the local conformal symmetry and the broken global $mathrm{SO}(1,1)$ symmetry in the metric-affine geometry. With use of the metric-affine geometry where both the metric and the affine connection are treated as independent variables, the local conformal symmetry can be preserved in each term of the Lagrangian and thus higher derivatives of scalar fields can be easily added in a conformally invariant way. Predictions of this minimal slow-roll $k$-inflation, $n_mathrm{s}sim 0.96$, $rsim 0.005$, and $c_mathrm{s}sim 0.03$, are not only consistent with current observational data but also have a prospect to be tested by forthcoming observations.
We propose that the Standard Model (SM) Higgs is responsible for generating the cosmological perturbations of the universe by acting as an isocurvature mode during a de Sitter inflationary stage. In view of the recent ATLAS and CMS results for the Higgs mass, this can happen if the Hubble rate during inflation is in the range $(10^{10}- 10^{14})$ GeV (depending on the SM parameters). Implications for the detection of primordial tensor perturbations through the $B$-mode of CMB polarization via the PLANCK satellite are discussed. For example, if the Higgs mass value is confirmed to be $m_h=125.5$ GeV and $m_t, alpha_s$ are at their central values, our mechanism predicts tensor perturbations too small to be detected in the near future. On the other hand, if tensor perturbations will be detected by PLANCK through the $B$-mode of CMB, then there is a definite relation between the Higgs and top masses, making the mechanism predictive and falsifiable.
In this paper, we revisit the estimation of the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves originated from inflation, particularly focusing on the effect of thermodynamics in the Standard Model of particle physics. By collecting recent results of perturbative and non-perturbative analysis of thermodynamic quantities in the Standard Model, we obtain the effective degrees of freedom including the corrections due to non-trivial interaction properties of particles in the Standard Model for a wide temperature interval. The impact of such corrections on the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves as well as the damping effect due to free-streaming particles is investigated by numerically solving the evolution equation of tensor perturbations in the expanding universe. It is shown that the reevaluation of the effects of free-streaming photons and neutrinos gives rise to some additional damping features overlooked in previous studies. We also observe that the continuous nature of the QCD crossover results in a smooth spectrum for modes that reenter the horizon at around the epoch of the QCD phase transition. Furthermore, we explicitly show that the values of the effective degrees of freedom remain smaller than the commonly used value 106.75 even at temperature much higher than the critical temperature of the electroweak crossover, and that the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves at a frequency range relevant to direct detection experiments becomes $mathcal{O}(1),%$ larger than previous estimates that do not include such corrections. This effect can be relevant to future high-sensitivity gravitational wave experiments such as ultimate DECIGO. Our results on the temperature evolution of the effective degrees of freedom are made available as tabulated data and fitting functions, which can also be used in the analysis of other cosmological relics.
The next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model predicts the formation of domain walls due to the spontaneous breaking of the discrete $Z_3$-symmetry at the electroweak phase transition, and they collapse before the epoch of big bang nucleosynthesis if there exists a small bias term in the potential which explicitly breaks the discrete symmetry. Signatures of gravitational waves produced from these unstable domain walls are estimated and their parameter dependence is investigated. It is shown that the amplitude of gravitational waves becomes generically large in the decoupling limit, and that their frequency is low enough to be probed in future pulsar timing observations.